OK, I really need to vent because reading The Fault in Our Stars is emotionally exhausting. I'll put my feels in spoiler tags just in case someone's reading it/planning to read it.
If a story about love struck teenagers wasn't emotional enough, they all have cancer (basically). Hazel, the main character, has some type of Thyroid cancer, and it causes her lungs to fill up with fluid. At one point she recounts the time where she's brought into the ICU, and her mom is crying into her dad's chest saying "'I'm never going to be a mother again'". This really, really hit me hard. Like, I'm crying just typing this. Hazel is an only child, so if her mother loses her, that's it. She'll most likely never have another kid again. Children with siblings, if you or your brother/sister die, your parents will feel remorse, but they'll still be parents. If kids who are only children die, their parents become the parents of a dead child, and they go back to being just ordinary people. It just hurts so much to think what would happen if my parents lost me. I'm nobody special, and I consider myself unextraordinary just like Hazel does, but I know for a fact that my parents will never have another child again, and that just kills me. I'm sorry, I needed to vent and take a break from the book before I have a breakdown.
That is very hard to read indeed. But even people with only one child won't turn back in ordinary people if they ever -God prevends it hopefully- lose their child because they always will have the experience of being a parent and that will never be taken from them. I agree with you fully. It is very sad and hard and no parent should bury their children. That just doesn't feel right at all